Word: nile
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...past six years, Egyptian soldiers have been using the irrigation canals of the Nile Valley as training ground for the attack they some day expected to make across the Suez. Explains one Egyptian military man: "Our men bridged those canals again and again and again, till they reached the point that crossing a canal was simple. On Oct. 6, the only difference was that across this canal was the real enemy." Within 72 hours, the Egyptians managed to move more than 70,000 troops and an estimated 500 to 700 tanks to the eastern bank-a remarkable logistical feat...
...military-hospital clerk in the Nile Delta, Sadat for much of his political life had seemed to be not much more than a devoted epigone of Egypt's beloved leader. In fact, he was somewhat the more impetuous and strong-headed of the two. During World War II, for instance, Sadat was jailed as a political subversive after the failure of two absurdly bungled plots to smuggle a former Egyptian general over to the Germans. First a getaway car broke down, then an escape plane crashed on takeoff. Along with two Nazi spies who were his accomplices, Sadat...
...founder of a new religion, Akhenaten needed a new capital for his god, and he found it at Tell el Amarna, a scoop in the hills along the Nile halfway between Memphis and Thebes. There, with an authority today's modern planners can only envy, Akhenaten laid out and had built a whole city. But when he died, the traditionalists took over and tore the whole place down. Thus there are few surviving works of monumental size, but the smaller objects, dug out of the rubble of Tell el Amarna and now on exhibition in Brooklyn, testify dramatically...
When Hawkins first advanced this theory in 1963, critics denounced it variously as meretricious and pure moonshine. Since then, he has bolstered his argument considerably while extending his inquiries to other works of preliterate man. He peered through temples along the Nile with his guide Gamel, "the quintessence of experts - an Egyp tian Egyptologist," and roamed the deserts of Peru with Palacio the grave robber. To avert unpleasant dietary sur prises, Hawkins stuck to an "expedition diet: beer, bread and stews boiled and bubbled to sterility." Surprises some times defied even this regime, however. In Cuzco, a tea prescribed...
With the help of his trusty "astro-probe" - Hawkins' term for the com puter-aided ability to re-create past sun and moon behavior - the author has found a "cosmic orientation" nearly everywhere. The world's largest ancient temple, built on the Nile for Amon-Ra about 1500 B.C., is aligned so the midwinter sunrise strikes the altar in the high room of the sun. More than a dozen Maya sites built around 500 B.C. mark the cycles of the sun, and Chichen Itza, like Stonehenge, clearly shows the extremes of lunar movement. On the banks...